The subject invention relates to a means or mechanism for heat transfer or for heat dissipation from an object to a fluid, such as air.
Heat transfer or heat dissipation on the basis of temperature differences is used in various ways with this technology. Heat transfer can generally occur in three different ways:
(1) Through heat conduction, whereby heat flows through a solid medium or a stagnant fluid,
(2) through convection, whereby heat is transported by movement of a medium, generally a fluid, and
(3) through radiation, whereby heat is transferred in the form of electromagnetic waves.
Frequently, several of these elementary types of heat transfer are combined with one another.
Heat exchangers are known in the art, which consist of two or more pipes through which two media flow at different temperatures whereby heat exchange occurs on the basis of parallel flow or countercurrent principles.
With solar power units, directing the focused solar heat from a mirror system to a wire mesh consisting of a cylinder with fine-meshed wires is already known. Air is then fed through the cylinder, whereby temperatures of more than 800.degree. C. can be attained. The energy contained in the hot air can then be utilized in various ways, such as in an absorber with cooling pipes, for example.
While relatively good degrees of efficiency can be achieved with the cylindrical wire mesh, the drawback is that the wire mesh has only limited stability and is difficult to shape as needed. Also known are cooling fins, cooling ridges and the like, located on the outer surface of a container and which provide better dissipation through the increased surface area.
The drawback here, however, is that this makes the object to be cooled significantly heavier and larger.
The present invention is therefore based on the problem of producing a device of the type mentioned, with a high degree of efficiency and also high stability, whereby it should also be largely free of limitations in its form and should not lead to too great an increase in weight or space requirements.